Mo Du (默读) - Silent Reading

Julien X

The counselor carefully scrutinized Fei Du. For a moment she had seen a complicated expression of unspeakable irritation flash across the young man's face, which made him seem more than ordinarily young and lively. She was almost a little astonished by this.

Fei Du had been referred to Dr. Bai some years ago. His previous counselor had been her shidi [25], an expert in young people's problems. Before that he had gone through an unknown number of counselors; probably Fei Du himself didn't clearly remember how many. It sounded as though he was simply a difficult person.

[25] Typically used to refer to people in the same school (in this case younger students).

When referring the patient to her, her shidi had naturally contacted her in advance. Dr. Bai had wanted to know what problem had brought this child to seek psychological counseling and also why his current counseling couldn't continue.

"In fact, I don't know what his problem is," her shidi had said. "He's pretty cooperative. If you ask him to say something, he'll talk about it. I've tried to discuss the problem of the lack of affection during his childhood, and his mother's unfortunate death, and so on. He doesn't evade anything, his manner is very sincere. When you don't have anything to say next he'll sometimes even very considerately hand you the next topic. Bai-jie, you understand, right?"

Dr. Bai had quickly heard his implication -the patient was uncooperative.

Dr. Bai had been working for many years. She had seen each and every type of uncooperative client: there were the ones who fabricated things during the evaluation; there were the ones whose relatives were forcing them, who persisted in thinking they didn't have a problem; there were also those who thought themselves very clever and tried to reverse analyze the counselor, and the process became a battle of wits.

A psychological counselor wasn't all-powerful. There would always be some people who, for various reasons, would never be able to build a relationship of mutual trust with the counselor, and the counseling would fail in the end. These patients were either referred to others or slowly gave up on psychological counseling and didn't come again.

Fei Du was, without a doubt, a special case among special cases.

He belonged to the type that fabricated at the initial evaluation, and moreover his fabrication was totally unassailable. He was also an engaging conversationalist during the sessions. He evaded very little. At first glance he even gave the impression of having nothing to hide. When he had been a little younger, he had already been very adept at self-control; if the conversation touched on a sensitive subject, he would display neither aggression nor defensiveness towards the counselor; his emotional feedback was direct from start to finish.

The only problem was that it was too direct.

Encountering keenly felt pain, the healthiest and most powerful person still couldn't maintain an inward intellectual calm from start to finish -after all, a mighty AI only needs to have its batteries charged; it doesn't need psychological counseling.

Dr. Bai used countless methods without being able to establish an effective doctor-patient channel of communication. She could only lay down her cards and acknowledge to him: "My level of expertise ends here. I may not be able to help you. If you believe you still need help, I can try referring you to a better counselor."

She hadn't expected Fei Du to refuse. Further, after going through over a month of treatment with no outcome, like someone with more money than brains, he had doubled the counseling fee, buying out the last two hours of Dr. Bai's schedule every Wednesday evening. And every time he came, he would very sweetly compliment, "I feel very comfortable here with you. It's really helping me." -If Dr. Bai didn't think she was old enough to be his mother, it was possible she would have gotten the wrong impression and suspected this little playboy was coming to try to pick her up.